Between 1950 and the early 1970s, immigration changed Toronto in two stages. First came Europeans, led by Italians and followed by Portuguese families, drawn by jobs in construction and factories. After the federal regulations of 1962 and 1967 removed most explicit racial barriers, more arrivals came from Asia and the Caribbean. By the 2021 census, Statistics Canada counted immigrants as 46.6 percent of the Toronto census metropolitan area, the highest share among Canada’s large urban areas.
This page follows that postwar shift. For the earlier history of settlement, see the page on immigration and communities in Toronto’s history.
The rules that shaped who could come
The Canadian Council for Refugees timeline of a hundred years of immigration policy gives the main dates. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration was formed in 1950, and a June 1950 order kept preferences for British, Irish, French, and American immigrants while mostly excluding Black applicants. A new Immigration Act, passed in 1952 and in force on June 1, 1953, gave officials broad powers over selection, admission, and deportation and allowed refusals based on nationality and ethnic group. In February 1962 new regulations removed most racial discrimination, though Europeans could still sponsor a wider range of relatives than others could. In October 1967 a points system was added to the regulations, which the timeline describes as eliminating the last element of racial discrimination and reducing the sponsored family class.
Sources disagree about how complete the 1962 change was. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes 1962 as ending racial discrimination in the system, while the Council for Refugees says 1962 removed most of it and that 1967 removed the rest. Both dates are therefore given here.
Refugee movements also reached Toronto. The same timeline records that more than 37,000 Hungarians were admitted in under a year after the 1956 uprising, and that 10,975 Czechs entered between August 1968 and March 1969. Those figures are national totals, not Toronto counts.
Why Toronto drew workers
Franc Sturino, writing in Polyphony in 1984 for the Multicultural History Society of Ontario, explains the pull: Toronto held a third of Ontario’s manufacturing workers in the 1940s and received 47 percent of Canada’s new industrial development in 1946. Most immigrants arrived as laborers from rural areas, and their main asset was manual work, especially in construction. Jobs spread through kin networks, so one family’s arrival often brought cousins and neighbors into the same firm. The effect was chain migration: earlier arrivals supplied information, travel loans, help with sponsorship paperwork, housing, and jobs.
Italians and Portuguese, 1950s to 1970s
Italians were the largest European group to arrive in this period. Sturino writes that Toronto’s Italian population grew from a prewar community of under 16,000 to about 300,000 by 1981, more than 10 percent of the metropolitan population, and that Metro Toronto held about 40 percent of Canada’s Italians. Their story is told in detail on the page about Italian Toronto.
Portuguese immigration followed. Domingos Marques and João Medeiros, in a 1984 Polyphony article drawn from their 1980 book, give about 10,000 Portuguese in Toronto in the 1962 census returns and about 85,000 people of Portuguese descent in 1974. See the page on Portuguese Toronto.
Where newcomers came from, by decade
The Toronto Star’s interactive maps of census data, annotated by geographer Edward Relph on his Toronto Transforms site, describe the sources of immigration to the Toronto region decade by decade.
| Decade | Main sources |
|---|---|
| 1941 to 1950 | Mostly the United Kingdom, plus Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania |
| 1951 to 1960 | Western and northern Europe, plus a wave from Italy along the Bathurst corridor toward Woodbridge |
| 1961 to 1970 | United Kingdom, southern Europe (mostly Italy, some Portugal); Caribbean and East Asian immigration begins on a small scale |
| 1971 to 1980 | Portugal, China, India, and the Caribbean; South Asian immigration begins |
| 1981 to 1990 | China and India intensify; Vietnamese immigration peaks; Eastern Europe rises |
| 1991 to 2005 | East and South Asia, Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and the Philippines |
After 1967: Asia and the Caribbean
The change after the points system is visible in the national numbers. Statistics Canada’s 2021 census release reports that Asia, including the Middle East, accounted for 62.0 percent of recent immigrants in the 2021 count, against 12.1 percent in 1971, while Europe fell from 61.6 percent in 1971 to 10.1 percent. In Toronto the new arrivals of the 1970s included Chinese, Indian, and Caribbean immigrants, many settling in the suburbs. One distinct movement was the resettlement of Ugandan Asians in 1972. Jan Raska of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 writes that Idi Amin ordered Ugandans of Asian heritage to leave on August 4, 1972, that Canada granted 6,175 visas, and that Ontario received 1,847 of the refugees. This story is continued on the page about South Asian Toronto. The Caribbean side is covered in the pages on Caribana and Black history in Toronto.
The 2021 picture
Statistics Canada reports that 23.0 percent of Canada’s population in 2021 were or had been landed immigrants or permanent residents, the highest share since Confederation. Toronto received the largest share of recent immigrants of any census metropolitan area, 29.5 percent, and 46.6 percent of its population were immigrants. Within the region, immigrants were more than half of the residents of Markham (58.6 percent), Richmond Hill (58.2 percent), Mississauga (53.2 percent), and Brampton (52.9 percent). These are census figures for 2021 and are not updated here; the census finder and population history pages link to the underlying tables.
What changed Canadian immigration policy in the 1960s?
The February 1962 regulations removed most racial discrimination, and the October 1967 points system removed the last element, according to the Canadian Council for Refugees timeline. The Canadian Encyclopedia lists skills, education, language ability, and family ties as the main criteria that replaced origin.
Which groups were largest in Toronto after the war?
British arrivals led in the 1940s, and Italians were the largest new group of the 1950s and 1960s, according to Sturino and the Toronto Transforms maps.
Why did so many immigrants work in construction?
Sturino writes that most Italians arrived as laborers with little schooling, and that in 1971 almost a third of Italian immigrant men in Toronto worked in construction.
How many Torontonians are immigrants today?
Statistics Canada’s 2021 census gives 46.6 percent for the Toronto census metropolitan area. Later censuses will replace this figure.
Related reading
- An overview of Toronto’s history
- Immigration and communities in Toronto’s history
- Toronto population history
- Toronto’s population and languages
- Toronto neighbourhoods
Last verified: October 2026
Sources
- Canadian Council for Refugees: “A hundred years of immigration to Canada, 1900-1999, Part 2”: ccrweb.ca
- Franc Sturino, “Contours of Postwar Italian Immigration to Toronto,” Polyphony, Summer 1984, Multicultural History Society of Ontario: archives.studentscommission.ca
- Statistics Canada, The Daily, October 26, 2022: “Immigrants make up the largest share of the population in over 150 years” (2021 Census): statcan.gc.ca
- Edward Relph, Toronto Transforms: maps of sources of immigration to the Toronto region, from the Toronto Star interactive series based on Census of Canada data (torontotransforms.com)
- Domingos Marques and João Medeiros, “Portuguese Immigrants in Toronto,” Polyphony, Summer 1984 (Multicultural History Society of Ontario)
- Jan Raska, “Canada’s Oppressed Minority Policy and the Resettlement of Ugandan Asians, 1972-1973,” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 (pier21.ca)
Cite this page
APA: History of Toronto. (2026, October 23). Postwar Immigration to Toronto: From Europe to Asia. http://localhost:8210/blog/postwar-immigration-toronto
MLA: “Postwar Immigration to Toronto: From Europe to Asia.” History of Toronto, 23 Oct. 2026, http://localhost:8210/blog/postwar-immigration-toronto. Accessed .
Chicago: History of Toronto. “Postwar Immigration to Toronto: From Europe to Asia.” Last modified October 23, 2026. http://localhost:8210/blog/postwar-immigration-toronto.
The pages have no named author, so the site is given as the author. Add the date you read the page if your style asks for it.